St George's News

LOOKING BACK ON EIGHTY YEARS

RUBY'S MEMOIRS, PART 13: FROM HILDENBOROUGH TO DENMEAD

PART 1 - THE EARLY YEARS
PART 2 - THE GREAT WAR
PART 3 - THE TWENTIES
PART 4 - FROM GENERAL STRIKE TO WORLD WAR 2
PART 5 -MARRIED LIFE AND THE CLOUDS OF WAR
PART 6 - OUTBREAK OF WAR
PART 7 - THE HEIGHT OF WAR
PART 8 - 1942-44:AMERICA DECLARES WAR
PART 9: POST-WAR 1945-1950: RUNNING THE PUB
PART 10: THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
PART 11: THE HOMECOMING
PART 12: THE SIXTIES
PART 14: TRAVELLING THROUGH LIFE AND DEATH
PART 15: THE LAST 25 YEARS

Part 13: From Hildenborough to Denmead

FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SEPTEMBER 1997 ISSUE OF ST GEORGE'S NEWS

On returning from their honeymoon Tony and Jane went down to live near Portsmouth just outside Denmead in a delightful garden flat at Shrover. I knew Petersfield in those days as we stayed with some friends who were curators at "Uppark" on the downs when Tony was at Dartmouth and it was a lovely break in the journey, little did I think of one day I might settle in this delightful part of England. But there were to be many changes ahead. We had a settled life running this small shop. It was an interest for Ted and quite easy to manage so I had time to take stock of our life and realised that time was running out for his continuing ill-health. I had become Commandant of the local Red Cross, and a friend of mine was the Branch Officer and somehow between us the detachment flourished. It was a change to do some outside work, practical work I enjoyed but found the paper work very time consuming. Money raising was all important so this became our chief headache.

The previous Commandant had bought a disused church hall for headquarters as now we had a Cadet unit and link for the younger ones. The Hall had been neglected since the war when it was used by the Army. Dirt and dust were everywhere, with a grotty little kitchen at one end, large double doors at the front. The army had put in four loos, but they had been bricked up when they had no more use for the hall and vacated it. The cost of recovering them was too great for the time being, and so we had to be content with one adjoining the kitchen which was usable. After some months of work, climbing ladders and scaling walls to reach the ceiling with buckets of soap & water and disinfectant but with many willing hands we got it ready and did the necessary painting with brown, green and yellow paint which was cheap from the Government Surplus Stores - not pretty but hard wearing! - and it was finally passed for using as a nursery school every morning. They were not too fussy in those days so with that and some other lettings we at last had some money coming in.

Red Cross Cadets

THE RED CROSS CADETS AT THE VILLAGE FETE, HILDENBOROUGH, KENT, CIRCA 1964

Amongst our numbers we had a few men who formed an ambulance team and they were a great help, especially one who was a car mechanic in a local garage and he started an "Ernie" type lottery amongst his workmates and anyone else interested, in two years he was able to pay back the original cost!!! I can remember once entering our Cadets in a "Best Decorated Lorry" in a Village Fete when we won a money prize of £5. It was all grist that came to the mill and a fiver was quite a lot of money then.

Tony and Jane were married in August 1965 in the Village Church of Hildenborough and the wedding was celebrated at the Hilden Manor in true Naval Style. It was a beautiful summer day and Ted got through it well. After all this excitement we settled down to a very quiet time. One thing I can remember on a very snowy night during the winter I had turned out to give an old lady her weekly bath but I found it was her husband in the bath and couldn't get out! After applying our usual method of a towel round the taps and a heave ho at the back he was soon up and on his feet. She had let him have the water as she didn't expect me to go! On the way home I slipped on a pavement which had been cleared with hot water - so it had quickly frozen again. I eventually got home and I was in such pain I phoned the doctor who came and took me to hospital where they made it more comfortable but I had to return the next day to have it set, this time by ambulance which collected me at 9.am.I returned home the same way at 6.pm. I was in plaster for six weeks and found out what you can do with one hand!

During this rather difficult period with a shop to look after, a sick husband as well, I came across a woman looking for work. Her husband was out of work and she had a sick child who seemed to have to go up to Gt Ormond Street Hospital at regular intervals. She was a big strong woman capable of doing most things so I thought her a god-send. She kept the Hall clean for the Red Cross, her husband opened it in the morning and closed it at night locking up and kept an eye on any evening lettings we had, and even when he found work he still did these jobs for us. They both stayed on and helped until eventually left Tonbridge.

In 1966 our first grandchild was born in St Mary's Hospital Portsmouth, some weeks early so had to be kept there for a few extra weeks. Tony was ashore at the time and when the baby was strong enough he and Jane brought her to Kent, and was able to show Ted his grand-daughter. He died that night.

All the unanswerable questions came up, what to do, where to live, I didn't feel I wanted to keep the shop on and be tied to it seven days a week, I had had too many happy years in Tonbridge and life would never be the same without Ted. However I stayed on as the family were here also my sister with her children, and the outside interests of which I seemed to have plenty, kept me ticking over. Tony went to sea again, so Jane then came back to Hildenborough where she was looking after her father's house while he was in South Africa. She was a great help and often looked after the shop for me. She said "fancy having to look after a sweetie shop, I always wanted to do that," so during that time she and Julianne were often around.

For me time stood still, busy as I was it was always rather mechanical and leading nowhere. The world was full of trouble. People were becoming greedy and selfish, things that had no place in wartorn England where people had cared, were gradually creeping in, and horror of horrors children were stealing from my shop.The big manufacturers were insisting that their wares were displayed more openly, but of course this led to little fingers putting goodies in their pockets and other small objects as well. I caught one little rascal in the act while his friend was being served. I was able to grab him as he left the shop with his mate and found quite a collection in both pockets. I said if he ever came in again I would hand him over to the police, he was terrified and I never saw him again. Now of course it is accepted and the cost of pinching is borne by the consumer. "For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the want of a shoe the horse was lost, etc." I feel that in the future it will end "that the world was lost".

However to turn to happier memories, a friend of ours from America on a visit to his mother and his brother who was a master at Tonbridge School came to see me as he had always stayed at the Guest House. He was shocked to hear that Ted had died, he himself was retiring from The Federal Reserve Bank of U.S.A. and was getting ready to tour the world. He took me out and about as he was on his own. Like all Americans he loved to travel and always thought they could "do" England in a day or two, so would fly up to Scotland for a couple of days, come back only to be going off to the Curragh in Ireland to look over some horses for his brother in America who was a breeder, and then off somewhere else. So as you can imagine he was a very interesting companion and I got used to dropping him and picking him up at Gatwick or Heathrow. It was all a new kind of life for me. He said I was wasting my life in "that little candy store" and should see a bit of the "new world" before I got too old. It had never occurred to me that I was getting old. I was now a grandmother, I don't think I had realized that until then. At a later date we were in London to see the show "Oliver" and during dinner he said "why shouldn't we get married and then you could travel with me". After that bombshell I didn't remember what the show was about so had to go some time later to see the film to refresh my memory. Next day I told Jane about it and she said, why don't you!

After this he departed to Spain to look up some more friends which gave me a breathing space but was back within a week. He didn't like Spain much, it was stinking hot and they were short of water so he couldn't even "Take a Tub" which meant "Bath", and had to do with a little trickle of water for a shower. How he made us all laugh.

By this time Tony had come back to England and bought a house in Denmead, in which they still live. Things happened so quickly, we married, sold the shop,moved down to live in Tony's flat at Shrover which they had vacated and with my cat and dog settled down to village life in Hampshire. There was no stopping to the speed at which we lived. There seemed to be shopping expeditions each day, Bob bought a new car, a Ford Cortina and with this we explored Hampshire and the surrounding countryside. Eventually we went to Switzerland for a holiday. I chose Interlaken this time, I felt I could not go to Davos, it was a bit too soon, but found Interlaken a wonderful centre for visiting France, Germany and Italy. We were not home long before we had news from another brother in Kenya saying his wife had died and would we go out to him. Bob didn't need asking again and after collecting a visa for Africa I found us once again in the air for Cairo and thence to Niarobi the next day. Funnily enough I didn't like Kenya very much. It was early days of their independence, but Kenyetta was a good President and knew how to handle his new country. Things were very different after his death.

In our travelling we went to waterholes at night with the large animals drinking, saw birds of every size and colour, great farms that the British had left now returning to jungle, Mt Kenya rising up out of the flat land like a Pyramid, vultures waiting for their share of an antelope which a lion had just killed to feed his family, every journey you made was of something you probably would never see again. After some weeks of this Bob wanted to come back to England which he said was the best country in the world. So back we came.

this series of Ruby's "Memoirs" to be continued.

written by Ruby Bullock

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